


Cassandra Loves Him

by NorroenDyrd



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Age Difference, Developing Relationship, Drabble Sequence, F/M, First Time, Mild Smut, POV Cassandra Pentaghast, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 09:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15021737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: No matter the race or age or origin or temperament, Cassandra always loves the Inquisitor that chooses to open his heart to her. She loves him fully; she loves him whole.A collection of tiny fluffy drabbles about Cassandra and four very different Inquisitors from among my boundless character cast, who have romanced her in various playthroughs (all men so far, hence my use of pronouns).





	Cassandra Loves Him

Cassandra loves it when she gets to spar in the Skyhold courtyard with the rugged Qunari warrior - almost as broad and coarsely battle-scarred as Bull, with one horn chopped off into a thick asymmetrical stub during one of his monster-slaying mercenary missions.  
  
She has always been a sword and shield fighter (something that has lately been giving Varric a lot of excuses for most insufferable puns) - but her Inquisitor, her Adaar, has been encouraging her to practice a two-handed grip as well.  
  
She rarely uses a greatsword in battle, still too dependent on her shield, and the protection it offers to herself and her allies from a piercing arrow spray, or a jet of roaring, blindingly orange and scarlet and purple mage fire, or a crushing swing of swollen venous limbs deformed by red lyrium. But these training sessions of theirs, in and of themselves, bring so much joy to her.  
  
She loves Adaar’s presence behind her back, tall and solid and comforting with his aura of steady warmth. She loves his touch on her elbows as he shows her how to balance herself and not to be outweighed by the giant weapon: rough, callused palms anchoring her in place, their texture imprinting through the breezy fabric of the shirt that she has put on for training. She loves how he moves by her side, their steps falling in sync as if in a dance - just the way they will in any battles to come, regardless of the weapons they will arm themselves with; a single, unstoppable, deadly whirlwind with two people fighting as one in its core. Two devout Andrastians, two protectors of the weak and the small and the lost, who have been keeping the darkness, be it in form of bandit arrows or Venatori mage fire or red Templars’ claws, at bay almost since the moment they met.  
  
And she loves the look on his face when, time and time and time again, she uses what he has taught her against him, and lands him flat on his shoulder blades, the long practice pole pressed against his wide grey throat. She loves savouring the gem-like glimmer in his green eyes, a mix of amusement and approval and profound awe, as she kneels down, scissoring his heaving body - big and hairy and firmly muscular underneath the slight outer chub - with her thighs, the pole still in between them, and feels her throat flush deep and hot with the realization that she is acting out one of the cheesiest scenes from her favourite books… And that it is actually working.  
  
Cassandra loves her trusty Qunari comrade in arms, and every moment spent with him. Cassandra loves her hopeful, eager, ever-learning Dalish admirer, and every moment spent with him.  Cassandra loves her excitable, thrill-seeking, and secretly very soft and affection-starved smuggler-turned-Inquisitor, and every moment spent with him.  
  
***  
  
Cassandra loves it when the youthful Dalish, no longer snappish and tense with wariness as he was during their early travels together, lowers himself by her side in the tall grass, which ripples like green silk all around them at the careless touches of wind, and cups his hand around her face, slowly dipping his head forward until his brow touches hers, with his angular face contented and serene, his gaze cloudless as the sky above.  
  
She knows now that her Inquisitor, her Lavellan, has been so flighty and reckless and short-tempered, throwing himself into danger at the slightest provocation, because he is secretly unsure of himself; unsure if he will ever be enough, as the Keeper’s First, the leader of Thedosian forces marching against demons, as a lover.  
  
On their first night together, he curled up into a shivering ball on the pile of rustling foliage, with his pale skin giving off a soft glow in the moonlight, and with the thorny purple vines of the vallaslin, which twist all over his skin from head to toe, darkening into inky black.  
  
‘I… I am sorry…’ he stuttered, his amber eyes wide and wild. 'I.. lied… Lied like the fucking… Fen'Harel… I ne… never bedded anyone before… I… just… bragged to Bla… Blackwall and Bull… So you could hear… And think I was like the men from your books… But I am not…’  
  
He really is not. He is young and inexperienced, and terrified of failure, because he thinks himself worthless unless he gets everything impeccably perfect on the first try. But he also cares for Cassandra, and their cause, with an ardour that, for the first time in his life, is giving him strength not to recoil from failure. To get up after every fall, and try again.  
  
This is what makes him real - what makes him better than the eternally virile, flawlessly skilled super-lovers from smutty literature. He learns. And Cassandra loves seeing him learn. And learning with him.  
  
Cassandra loves how the hesitant strokes of his long fingers along her cheekbone and her neck grow more and more assured, more and more bold, while his breath catches giddily at the sight of her encouraging smile. She loves how his kisses begin with chaste little pecks on her cheek, her hand, the corner of her mouth - each of them leaving a silent, reverent pause behind it, like a question mark. To which Cassandra ways responds with an emphatic exclamation point, her tongue slipping into Lavellan’s mouth, spurring him on to cling to her tighter, to pull her down with him till they both sink into the rising emerald sea of grass, the elf’s arduous handiwork hidden from view.  
  
Cassandra loves her hopeful, eager, ever-learning Dalish admirer, and every moment spent with him.  
  
***  
  
Cassandra loves it when she is courted by the aging Circle mage - one that most of the people of Thedas know as Inquisitor Trevelyan, even though it is not quite correct (that story is complicated, and deserves to be dwelt on some other time, when Cassandra is not all a-flutter).  
  
His wooing is subtle, unobtrusive; it can hardly even be called wooing, at first, because he does not expect anything in return. Cassandra knows it from fleeting lapses of whispered conversations not meant for her ears - conversations with Vivienne or Varric or Dorian for the most part, cutting off into a pointed silence and curt exclamations of denial whenever she comes into full view from behind a turn in a dusky stone gallery at Skyhold, or a mossy statue in an elven ruin, or an overburdened stall in a noisy, motley-bright Orlesian marketplace.  
  
He admires her greatly, he admits when prodded by his companions; but he knows his place. It would be wrong for them to… fraternize, and if he ever does, hypothetically show her signs of affection (which cannot even be traced back to him!), it is for the sole purpose of brightening her day.  
  
Her day is brightened, indeed, when she finds a dainty, magically freshened bouquet waiting by her bedside, wishing her a good day in the flower language. Or when she spots a little tome of poetry lying on top of her messy stack of unfinished reports, with crispy binding that still has not lost its scent, and with certain pages carefully bookmarked to draw her attention to a verse that reflects the Inquisition’s recent adventures (a description of a lush verdant grove, like those in the Emerald Graves, perhaps; or an eerily beautiful passage about fathomless misty moors, as a nod to the expedition to the Fallow More; or an excerpt from an alliterative epic about slaying dragons). Her day is brightened when a mysterious someone remembers it is her name feast (something that she herself does not usually care to do), and has her blade augmented with a powerful rune as a gift. Her day is brightened when she comes back to her quarters after enduring an encounter with Chantry officials, to find the fire brightly kindled and a box of Orlesian sweetmeats placed in the heart of a very welcoming blanket nest.  
  
But no day out of these many, many days is brightened more than the one when she finally confronts the mastermind behind it all, backs him into a corner, and tells - orders! - him to court her out in the open. Because she knows either way; she has known for a long time.  
  
'And,’ she blurts out with her arms thrown up, only properly registering what she has been saying when he gapes at her in both astonishment and relief, 'I can hardly return your feelings when you are being so secretive about it, now can I?’  
  
He freezes for a moment or so, his gaze locked with hers - and then slowly takes her hand, still without breaking eye contact, and kisses it. And she loves that. Maker, she loves that.  
  
She loves the fine lines that spread around his slightly bruised brown eyes from a smile when he presents his gifts to her - in person, this time. She loves the brush of his thin lips against hers as they say goodbye at the brink of dawn, the night having flown by in between a moonlit stroll along the battlements of Skyhold, with the pearl dust of stars glimmering against the velvety black dome overhead. She loves the feeling of his gloved hand on the small of her back when they spin in a slow dance (which does not prove nearly as much of a fiasco as she has feared; or maybe her partner is just too generous with his patience).  
  
Cassandra loves her attentive, gentlemanly mage companion, and every moment spent with him.  
  
***  
  
Cassandra loves it when she gets dragged on impossible escapades by the boisterous Dwarven rogue who never seems to take anything seriously. Heavens know, she sometimes gets so annoyed by that: they are not some ragtag adventurers like, for instance, the infamous Kirkwall Crew (or at least, Varric’s version of it). They are holy warriors on a lofty mission to rid the world of an ancient magister’s corruption! Surely, it is unbecoming for them to wink and grin in the face of mortal doom, the way her Inquisitor, her Cadash, is so fond of doing!  
  
Unbecoming and irresponsible and… Sometimes sorely needed.  
  
For all of what he refers to as 'razzle-dazzle’ and the Inquisition advisors condemn as lack of discipline; for all of his magpie-like inclinations to scour every cave, no matter how convoluted and rife with pitfalls and unsteady rock formations, for chests with buried treasure; for all of his stubborn itching to scale the highest cliff, and then jump from it into the deepest, most frothing vortex of leaden sea water, and emerge riding a wave as tall as a Fereldan country cottage on a flat strip of driftwood, as naked as on the way he was born, because the force of the tide has knocked all the clothes off him - for all of… him being him… Cadash is like a breath of fresh air.  
  
Always yearning to escape the routine. Always on the hunt for adventure. Always looking on at the world a genial chuckle, even when the world kicks him in the face (in which case he would probably just spit out his pinkish bloodied teeth, give a silent thumbs-up, and continue on, amid encouraging hoots from Sera.  
  
And for that, Cassandra loves being in his company. She loves how her blood quickens when she follows Cadash to the topmost peak, up the steepest path, towards the sheerest drop into a boundless valley drenched in the golden glow of the rising sun. She loves how contagious his laugh is, head thrown back so that his beard points up at the sky, eyes like sapphire crescents against his tanned face, which is crisscrossed by squarish dark-blue tattoo patterns. She loves how readily he forgets his claims that he is a 'greedy rogue’, and gives away all the wealth he has looted, beaming with childish excitement when the destitute refugees thank him for his kindness.  
  
And she loves how, carried by this undying wave of elation, he pours all of his passion into kissing her, into exploring her scars, and drawing tender swirls across the soft nooks of her body with his stubby but nimble fingers - and then, hugging her tight, with a shudder-like sigh that passes through to his very core, because 'Damn it, salroka, I never thought you’d love a ne'er-do-well thief like me’.  
  
But she does. Oh, she does.  
  
Cassandra loves her excitable, thrill-seeking, and secretly very soft and affection-starved smuggler-turned-Inquisitor, and every moment spent with him.  
  
***  
  
No matter the race or age or origin or temperament, Cassandra always loves the Inquisitor that chooses to open his heart to her. She loves him fully; she loves him whole.


End file.
